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Verdict and after Message from Jeddah |
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Call of the mountains Facilitate more chopper services With a private airliner launching services on the New Delhi-Pathankot-Kangra sector, Western Himachal Pradesh destinations like Dharamshala and Dalhousie have become more accessible to the tourist.
Special real estate zones
Conversion convulsion!
Teamwork matters Isolated Bush faces ire of Congress Chatterati
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Verdict and after GIVEN the fractious nature of the issue of reservation on which the Supreme Court gave its verdict on March 29, some measure of protest was expected. The most vociferous was in Tamil Nadu where at the call of the ruling DMK and its allies, the state observed a one-day bandh. The nation heaved a sigh of relief when the bandh passed off peacefully, though normal life was severely affected. In Andhra Pradesh, the Assembly has passed a resolution asking the Centre to take appropriate steps to redeem the promise of providing reservation to educationally and socially backward classes in the courses in the IITs and the IIMs. The demand for convening an all-party meeting or a special session of Parliament to discuss the issue has also been gaining momentum. The court’s verdict may not be the last word on the subject. An appeal to have it reviewed by a larger bench can still be made as, after all, a much larger bench had earlier upheld the validity of reservation for backward classes in government jobs. Incidentally, the Mandal Commission report, which made such reservation possible, had based its statistics on the same, much-maligned 1931 census. It can also be asked why when jobs in prestigious all-India services like the IAS, the IPS and the IFS are reserved for OBC candidates, the same facility cannot be extended to courses in the IITs and the IIMs. Equally pertinent is the question whether medical and other professional courses in states like Tamil Nadu, where such reservation exists, are inferior to those in states where it does not exist. In short, the Supreme Court verdict has raised a whole lot of questions, which need to be addressed. On its part, the court has questioned the rationale for fixing the quota and it is incumbent upon the Central government to satisfy it with data, which will convince the court of the educational and social backwardness in the country. Since the reserved category, by and large, belongs to the majority community, any enlargement of reservation is bound to hit the minorities more. These are issues that need to be discussed and their solutions found in a peaceful manner. Bandhs and mass protests have no role in this. Political parties will do well to restrain their cadres and douse their passions. A return to the Mandal agitation days in the early nineties would be suicidal. |
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Message from Jeddah The Arab League’s adoption of the 2002 Saudi plan for ending the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict is significant from various angles. It has come soon after Saudi Arabia brokered peace between the Hamas and Fatah Palestinian factions. The Saudi initiative coincides with the renewed US efforts for getting the problem resolved. Any agreement between the two sides will help control the rising anti-Americanism in the region. Saudi Arabia has its own worries because of the lingering crisis. Its leadership of the Arab world has been threatened by the growing popularity of Iran among the Arab masses owing to Teheran’s forceful espousal of the Palestinian cause and open opposition to the stay of the foreign forces in Iraq. Iran’s clout increased considerably in the region during last year’s clashes between Israel and the Teheran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Despite the self-interest involved, the old Saudi proposal, presented afresh during the two-day Arab League summit in Jeddah that ended on March 29, offers an excellent opportunity for peace in West Asia. Based on the land-for-peace formula, it offers normalisation of relations between the Arab countries and Israel. But Israel will have to return all the Arab territories it occupied during the 1967 six-day war with a view to facilitating the establishment of a sovereign State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. The plan also has it that the Arab refugees must be allowed to go back to their ancestral homes in Israel. It is a different matter that many of them may not opt for getting displaced again. Interestingly, Israel has not categorically rejected the offer. It has serious reservations about the right of the refuges (people displaced during the 1967 war) to return to Israel. Yet it wants negotiations to begin. “You come with your position, and we will come with ours” was how Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres reacted to the Arab proposal. He is right. Let there be a fresh process for peace in West Asia. The opportunity must not be allowed to go waste. |
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Call of the mountains With a private airliner launching services on the New Delhi-Pathankot-Kangra sector, Western Himachal Pradesh destinations like Dharamshala and Dalhousie have become more accessible to the tourist. This is the advantage of a more liberal airline policy, that enabled players like Air Deccan to not only launch low-cost services on crowded sectors, but also provide flights to out-of-the-way destinations. Many such destinations do not have airfields that can take on big aircraft. Even if the space exists, airlines may not find it economically viable to operate large planes. But 50-seater aircraft are ideal, and the airline may well find that its services will have many takers. Apart from the hill stations and religious destinations that dot Himachal Pradesh, there are also many locations for adventure tourism. The government also needs to facilitate more chopper services to the hill state. A liberalised policy permitting both government and private players to offer services would further enhance the tourist traffic, both domestic and foreign. While even a 50-seater aircraft requires a minimum length of runway, which can be expensive to build and maintain, all a helicopter requires is a helipad. While it is more expensive for the passengers and can carry fewer numbers of people, helicopters can quickly and easily go where traditional aircraft cannot, thus opening up more areas to visitors and tourists. Both the state and the Centre should facilitate more flights by providing the necessary infrastructure, not only in terms of airfields and helipads, but also in support services. They should simultaneously ensure that safety regulations are followed diligently. Severe and unpredictable weather in the hills can pose problems, and all available technologies should be harnessed to keep their potential for disruption to the minimum. Environmental considerations should also be kept in mind. With proper planning and vision, tourism volumes into Himachal Pradesh can increase dramatically. |
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Punctuality is the politeness of kings. — Louis XVIII |
Special real estate zones
SPECIAL Economic Zone (SEZ) has become a fashionable buzz phrase. Few initiatives of the government have evoked as much protest as this one, as underscored by the recent police firing at Nandigram in West Bengal in which 14 people were killed. The opposition to the SEZ was so strong that it compelled the Left Front government to roll back its plan to acquire land in Nandigram. Elsewhere, too, SEZs have generated protest. The recent Zila Parishad election in Raigarh district in Maharashtra saw the Peasants and Workers Party-Shiv Sena alliance trouncing the Congress. The main electoral issue was the SEZ the Reliance group is planning to set up in the district. Wherever land acquisition process has started, the people have opposed it. This underlines the fact that there is something inherently wrong with the SEZ. It is touted as the panacea for a growth-starving nation like India and is modelled after the “highly successful” SEZs in China, which acted as the engine of growth in the Communist nation. But even in China, where Press freedom is non-existent, land acquisition has not been a smooth affair as the riot in Sauzhou, reported in the Wall Street Journal in June last, shows. India’s tryst with the SEZ began when the SEZ Act was passed in 2005. So far, over 400 SEZs, spread all over the country, have been given the nod. Work on them has come to a standstill, as the Empowered Group of Ministers preparing guidelines for SEZs, is yet to complete its work. That a committee has to evolve “guidelines” is in itself proof that the SEZ Act has fundamental flaws. No SEZ has so far become functional. In other words, it has played no role in India’s economic growth. It is now nearly 15 years since India overcame the limitations of the Hindu rate of growth. From a consistent 6 per cent growth rate, India has moved to the highest-ever growth rate of 9.2 per cent. It was the economic reforms initiated by the Narasimha Rao government in the early nineties that gave a push to the economic growth. The point is, Indian industry has proved that even without SEZs, it can achieve a commendable growth rate. Nobody disputes the need for industrialisation in a country which is still dependent on agriculture, which, again, is dependent on the vagaries of nature. Industries, even those in the IT sector, need land to grow. Every industry is land-based even if its employees may be creating virtual worlds from their workplaces. Today visitors to Bangalore, including heads of state like Vladimir Putin of Russia, are keener to visit the Infosys campus than the beautiful Cubbon Park in the heart of the city. In undivided Bihar, Jamshedpur, where Tisco is based, had the best civic amenities and the best public-maintained garden. They were not part of any SEZ. Similarly, Reliance was able to emerge as the largest industrial house in the country without being part of any SEZ. Again, industrialisation in Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries and Japan in the 20th century was not midwifed by the SEZ. All this goes to prove that the unwarranted trust in the SEZs as growth engines is grossly misplaced. Under the traditional system, industries buy land of their choice and set up shop. How is the SEZ different from this model and how will it “revolutionise” industrialisation as claimed by its advocates? Primarily, private sector developers and investors develop SEZs. Of course, the public sector and the joint sector, too, can have SEZs of their own. The stated objective is to promote export, investment and employment. An SEZ can be for a specific sector like tanneries in Tamil Nadu or petrochemicals in Gujarat or for vegetable processing in Punjab. The size can vary from 10 hectares to 10,000 hectares or more with absolutely no cap on the upper limit. Apart from providing a legal framework for the SEZ, the SEZ Act makes it obligatory for the government to acquire land and hand it over to the private developer or investor. This is where the problem has arisen. Under a law, enacted during the British period and which is allowed to remain on the statute book even today, the government is empowered to acquire land for “public purposes” like building roads, schools and hospitals It is a gross misuse of the power when land is forcibly acquired from farmers so that private investors can prosper. Under the SEZ Act, almost 75 per cent of the land acquired can be utilised for purposes like building flats while “earmarking” the rest for the core purpose. Hence, an SEZ has the potential to become a thriving real estate business, which has catapulted some of its leading practitioners to the Forbes list of multi-billionaires. Land has no fixed value. Circumstances determine its price. When Hindustan Motors was given nearly 700 acres of land over 50 years ago to set up its car factory, it could not utilise most of the land. Now, when the company is in the red, it has sought and obtained permission from the West Bengal government to convert the unused portion into a real estate asset. One reason why the SEZ has attracted criticism is that it does not guarantee alternative source of income to the farmers who have to part with their land. They get a one-time payment in lieu of not just land but also a vocation. The sharecroppers and the agricultural labourers are the worst victims, as they are not entitled to any compensation, though they lose their only source of income. Ideas of providing the farmers a stake in the project so that they also prosper like the SEZ built on their land have been bandied about with little progress. One practical solution is to let the government acquire 1500 acres of land, if it requires 1000 acres, and hand over the surplus land back to the farmers once the land is fully developed. In this context, it would be worth recalling that the Tatas had jacked up the price by over Rs 8,000 crore to take over the Anglo-Dutch steel major Corus. As the Tatas admitted, they could have paid even more to clinch the deal. That such magnanimity was not shown to the farmers of Singur by either the government or the house of Tatas is a different matter. Because of the plethora of tax concessions available to SEZs, industrial growth will shift to such autonomous zones. This will curtail industrial growth in the rest of the country. Baddi in Himachal Pradesh has grown at the cost of Punjab and Haryana only because of the tax concessions available to the industries there. As for jobs, it has not provided many jobs to the Himachalis. In any case, new technology is not labour intensive. The new BMW car factory in Tamil Nadu, whose cars start at Rs 27 lakh, and which went on stream on Friday last has provided 120 jobs! Unless handled carefully, SEZs will become real estate giants at the cost of agriculture. It is not the state’s job to aid the process just because a totalitarian state has allegedly made a success of it.n
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Conversion convulsion!
It was a conversion that engulfed the whole of India. It happened exactly 50 years ago and its fallout lasted for years as it convulsed every section of the population before normalcy was restored. Take comfort! Mercifully, it had no religious denomination, but concerned quite another denomination — of the currency. Yes, Indian coinage went decimal. The changeover took effect on April 1, 1957. But for a short period both decimal and non-decimal coins were in use. The denominations in circulation were 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50 naye paise and 1 rupee or 100 naye paise. The hassles of conversion were many and at times rather amusing. The challenge of converting the value of the old anna in terms of naye paise was formidable and a brain teaser. It led to prolonged confusion, especially among the masses. The rupee earlier consisted of 64 paise. Now it comprised 100 naye paise. Till then, one rupee was divided into 16 annas or 64 quarter annas. Each anna comprised four quarter annas. The quarter anna came in copper coins of the size of today's one rupee. Later, it also came with a hole in the middle that made it possible to string 64 such coins together to make it a garland of coins worth one rupee. In later years when it lost it currency, the quarter anna with a hole was used as washer by innovative mechanics and plumbers for fixing nuts and bolts! Apart from one anna, there were coins for half anna, two anna, four anna, eight anna or half a rupee and one rupee. It was common during the early days of decimal changeover to see consumers argue heatedly with the grocers, owners of eateries and restaurants and the general shops over the exact value of the anna in the new decimal naya paise. For example, in the small towns and cities of southern Indian states, a limited meal was priced at four anna. Normally, in the decimal coinage, it should convert into 25 naye paise as four anna was a quarter of a rupee which is now 100 naye paise. But, for some strange reason the eateries priced it at 26 naye paise. The quarrel over one naya paisa was quite understandable as that would fetch a packet of peanuts and a piece of gurd worth rupees three today!n |
Teamwork matters One of the peculiarities of government service is that the person who takes work out of you and the person who pays you salary have no connection whatsoever with each other. As a result one’s salary is safe irrespective of how one performs. This anomaly is open to exploitation by some unscrupulous elements that spend time by merely counting hours. As proof, one only has to see the South Block lawns on any winter afternoon where the lunch hour extends into a sunny siesta. There is now a danger in the offing for such ‘equal pay for unequal work’ seekers. The VI Pay Commission is deliberating on the concept of ‘performance related pay’. As the term implies, better performance will fetch a higher salary. This is indeed a laudable idea. Conceptually, reward and punishment are known to be the two main – if not the only – motivational factors to improve output. The proposed system should surely increase efficiency in government departments. If the concept is finally accepted and is applied across the board it would also cover the defence forces. But there is a pitfall in that. I recall a conversation I was once having with a fresh inductee into the Indian Foreign Service. On learning that there were a total of eight officers in his batch, I asked him how many out of these would reach the Ambassador’s rank or position. My query was innocuous and was based on my own service statistics where only a miniscule number make it to higher ranks. (On a rough calculation the chance of an Army officer reaching the highest rank of General is one in three thousand). However, he looked at me with wide-eyed disbelief. “Why? Of course every one” he replied, and then added almost as an afterthought, “Unless one gets involved in a serious disciplinary case.” This is one of the main differences between the defence forces and other government services. While in the case of most others the promotion histogram is nearly rectangular, in the defence forces it is a very steep pyramid. According to a study some decades ago, while 69 per cent of IAS officers reach the rank of Joint Secretary, only 2 per cent in the Army reach the equivalent rank of Major General. The situation in the latter might have improved after the cadre review, but that would have happened only marginally. In sum, the performance factor is already built into the promotion system of the defence forces, where better performers get rewarded. There is also a strict grading system on all the training courses that every officer and most personnel below officer rank (PBOR) have to attend during their service. These grades are one of the factors that form the criteria for future promotions. For officers, qualification on the Defence Services Staff College Course is an important stepping stone in their careers. The selection for this course is through a tough entrance examination as well as an officer’s overall career profile. The select rank promotions from the rank of Colonel onwards are based entirely on one’s performance. The select higher ranks also automatically mean additional pay, as also two additional years of service with each rank. Financial gains also come with foreign assignments, which are given to those found higher in comparative merit. It would thus be seen that a defence employee works through a highly competitive environment throughout his years in uniform and better performers get rewarded by way of promotions and accompanying financial gains. There is, therefore, no rational need or reason to introduce one more conditionality in the form of ‘performance related pay’ in the system. There is another major difference. Unlike others, in the defence forces, the output depends mainly on team work. Soldiers are never required to undertake assignments singly. Individual performances get subordinated to a collective effort. The uniformed men draw their motivation chiefly from their regimental history and the need to keep their regimental flags soaring high. They willingly endure risks for the izzat of their paltans. To substitute that soldierly spirit by pecuniary factors would be hurting the very ethos of the concept of team work. To create gladiators from among equals can only be counter productive, as it might de-motivate others. This is not to say that in a team some do not rise above the others. They do, but only with the support of others. And such excellence is recognised through the system of gallantry and meritorious service awards already in vogue. Admittedly, competition is one of the valid methods to improve performance. In the defence forces the competing entity is taken as a team or a group instead of an individual. This kind of competition and recognition of good performance is already in place in the Army where ‘Unit Citations’ are awarded to battalions for good performance in the ongoing counter insurgency operations. Anything done to improve the existing financial package of the defence forces personnel should be welcome. However, instead of picking out an individual for grant of a performance-related pay and thus weakening the very edifice of a team, it would be far better to enhance remunerations across the board. And that is the crux of the problem. The existing salaries are far too inadequate. If the defence forces are to attract the right material from among the country’s youth, there is an urgent need to enhance their remunerations. Team work is the raison d’etre of the defence forces’ work culture. Let us not put the spoke of the ‘man of the match’ syndrome into that. The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff
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Isolated Bush faces ire of Congress Former US President Harry Truman, founder of the Pax Americana that George Bush seems well on the way to destroying, is the historical figure Bush most looks to for solace in this dismal final chapter of his own presidency. And certain similarities are undeniable. For both, a foreign war – Korea in the case of Truman, Iraq for Bush - was the dominant issue in their last two years in the White House. Both became intensely unpopular. If you think Bush’s present approval rating of around 30 per cent is bad, what about Truman who left office with one of 23 per cent? Yet he is now deemed one of the near-great presidents, right up there behind the troika of Lincoln, Washington and Franklin Roosevelt. He may have made a host of petty mistakes, historians agree, but the big things – NATO, the Marshall Plan, containment of the Soviet Union – he got triumphantly right. Churchill told Truman later that “I misjudged you badly,” and that since Roosevelt’s death, “you more than any other man, have saved Western civilisation”. As his own presidency implodes, Bush clings to the hope that events, even after he leaves office, will lead to a similar re-evaluation of the Iraq war; and that he, like Truman, will be hailed as a saviour of Western civilisation, by posterity if not by his own ungrateful and uncomprehending contemporaries. The differences, of course, are equally striking. For a start, Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq was entirely a war of choice. Even so, the political cycles coincide almost perfectly. Truman’s last midterm elections, in which his Democrats lost seats but narrowly retained control of Congress, were pretty dismal – though not as dismal as last November’s loss of both Senate and House by Bush’s Republicans. In both cases two leaders of whom the country had tired played out their terms, locked in place by a rigid constitutional system. Had Bush been a European prime minister, dependent on the support of a majority in parliament, he would surely by now have been replaced. But he soldiered on, and in Jenkins’ words, “The best that could be said for this final year and a half” (between the stalemate that settled on the Korean war in mid-1951 and Truman’s leaving office in January 1953) “was that by the standards of his Presidency, relatively little happened in it.” Somehow, I doubt the same will be said by future historians of the 660 days remaining to the present occupant of the White House. These are strange political times in Washington, and weird things could happen. And I’m not the only one to feel this way. Take the extraordinary comment of the conservative columnist Robert Novak. If anyone can glory in the label “veteran”, Novak can. When it comes to relations between the White House and Congress nobody knows more. In half a century, he wrote in The Washington Post this week, he had not seen a president as isolated from his own party in Congress – “not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment”. Not even Nixon? That is something. And is it a coincidence that the “I-word” is being murmured on Capitol Hill, not by Democrats, but by a leading Republican? To be sure, Chuck Hagel, the senior senator from Nebraska who broached the topic, is not your typical Republican. He has turned into an impassioned foe of the Iraq war, and may announce a bid for the presidency himself later this year. In short, Hagel has an agenda. By contrast, and for all their dislike of Bush, leaders of the Democratic majority in Congress profess not to be interested in launching impeachment proceedings. It would, they say, be a time-consuming distraction, and more likely than not it would unite Republicans around their President – the precise opposite of what Democrats want to bring about. Given their slender majorities in House and Senate, the party’s only hope of imposing its will on the White House is to win the support of enough Congressional Republicans to override a veto. It could just be, however, that this President will play into their hands. For consider another unusual ingredient in the political mix. This is an utterly open election. Not since 1928 has there been an election like 2008, when neither an incumbent president nor vice-president is in the race. Now listen to Hagel in an interview with Esquire: “You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends how this goes.” It wasn’t a threat – merely an observation on what conceivably could happen if the war continues to be a disaster, if Congress continues to demand the troop withdrawal in 2008 favoured by almost two thirds of the American public, and the White House continues to ignore it. By arrangement with
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Chatterati The only daughter of British Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Anne was in the capital recently. The media was kept at bay as the British High Commissioner held a reception for her. She spent most of her time talking to NGO workers. Princess Anne, an equestrian sportsperson, participated in the 1976 Montreal Olympics as part of the British eventing team, riding the Queen’s horse, Goodwill. She won the individual title at the European Eventing Championships at the age of 21, and participated for over five years in equestrian sports with the British team. She won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award in 1971 - and her daughter Zara Philips won the same title in 2006. Chief Minister Dixit also hosted a reception for the visiting royal. No withdrawal Despite the established norm that sensitive governmental issues are not discussed in public, PDP leader Mufti Saeed revels in brainstorming such issues with the media. He has now made a pitch for army withdrawal from Kashmir. No average Kashmiri wants the army or the security forces to withdraw from the state. Hired mercenaries will immediately create mayhem in the state. An average citizen,, fed up with acts of terrorism, shudders at the prospect of army withdrawal. Which vote bank is this call by the PDP meant to attract? Which army men or security personnel would like to stay in Kashmir if he is given a choice? Army deployment and withdrawal can only be decided by the Army Chief and the Defence Minister. It is the job of the intelligence agencies to make an assessment at the ground situation and then advise accordingly. This is hardly the time to think of withdrawal of the army from Kashmir. With an unstable Pakistan being ruled by a maverick General Musharaff, army withdrawal would give them an opportunity to rush in Jehadis from across the border. Mufti should also remember that these were the same terrorists who had once kidnapped the former Home Minister’s daughter. Only Indian democracy can tolerate such voices of dissent. Mufti should note that the USA denied visa to a sick Geelani on the charge that he was not condemning violence in Kashmir. At your service An unbelievable story, but true. A friend was traveling from Dehradun to Delhi by the Shatabdi Express. He went to the toilet near Hardwar when his blackberry mobile, which contained a lot of valuable data, slipped out of his hand into the WC and on to the railway track. He had been told about the spread of ‘Country Inns and Suites’ hotels in India, and Hardwar was one such location. Using his friend’s mobile he called the hotel manager. The manager sprang into action and asked two of his boys to walk down the railway track at night. They kept calling the blackberry number so that it would blink. They walked over two kilometres until they finally spotted it. My friend was leaving for an important tour the next day. These two boys hired a cab and drove to Delhi at 4 am and delivered the blackberry. |
God Himself is both Doer and Cause. It is easier for philosophers, mathematicians and messiahs to fathom the depth of Ishwara’s creation. He tolerates no deviation from
righteousness Love is giving the best we have. |
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